BBC critics choose their top picks among the Academy Awards' runners and riders – and reveal whose hopes may have gone cold.

Not to jinx her, but Jessie Buckley will most likely run the table, winning every best actress award from early-voting critics' groups through that long, long march to an inevitable Oscar. Her performance in Hamnet as Agnes, Shakespeare's wife, is vibrant and wrenching, especially when she desperately, futilely, tries to save her dying son. Festival audiences have been sobbing out loud. And we know how awards voters love a big emotional scene. Buckley got an Oscar nomination as supporting actress for The Lost Daughter (2021), so she's been through campaigns before. This time the pressure is on, as the Oscar is, quite rightly, hers to lose. And she'll have company on the campaign trail. Hamnet is one of the top awards contenders, for best picture, Chloé Zhao as director, Paul Mescal in his supporting role as Shakespeare, and adapted screenplay. (CJ)

Could Ariana Grande win a best supporting actress Oscar for Wicked: For Good? It's no surprise that commentators are asking that question: her performance as the ditzy-yet-sensitive Glinda is a sparkling comic delight, and the film itself is sure to be one of 2025's biggest hits. But Grande's potential win would be a unique achievement. Just as Wicked was the first Broadway musical to be split into two films, this would be the first time an actor had been Oscar-nominated for playing the same characters two years in a row. (Al Pacino came close: he was nominated for playing Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974).) And you never know – Grande's co-star, Cynthia Erivo, could be nominated two years running, too. (NB)

Ryan Coogler wrote and directed Creed and Black Panther, so he is one of the few people whose blockbusters make a fortune at the box office, at the same time as being lauded by the critics. But where are Coogler's Oscar nominations? Black Panther was nominated for best picture, as well as six other Academy Awards, but their writer-director himself was overlooked. Now, though, he has delivered Sinners, which was not only a fiercely original and personal take on vampire mythos, but was also this year's biggest American film that wasn't based on a video game, a cartoon, a pre-existing franchise or, in the case of F1, a trademarked sporting event. The Academy can't ignore Coogler any longer. (NB)

Timothée Chalamet is this year's Mr Oscar Bait, following up last year's Oscar-nominated role as Bob Dylan (awards bait written all over that one) with Marty Supreme. His character is based on a real-life figure, a 1950s ping-pong champion fictionalised as Marty Mauser, played by Timmy with a pencil moustache and dorky glasses. Let's see if he cosplays this guy through awards season as he did Dylan. And just as he talked endlessly about learning to sing and play guitar to become Dylan, now we learn he has been practicing ping-pong for eight years (what? how?), even taking a table with him to the Cannes Film Festival. You have to admit, his campaigns can be hilarious to watch.........

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